


Black Moths and Butterflies

by Quecksilver_Eyes



Category: Crimson Peak (2015)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, F/M, Implied/Referenced Incest, Sibling Incest, There we go!, is it major character death if it's canon?, self indulgent metaphors that are totally movie canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-28
Updated: 2018-03-28
Packaged: 2019-04-13 23:19:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14123016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quecksilver_Eyes/pseuds/Quecksilver_Eyes
Summary: „I won’t stop“, Lucille says. The blade cuts deep into her fingers, her blood drips on the tainted snow. „Until you kill me or I kill you.“ Edith is now as pale and trembling as she should be, a far cry from the butterfly stepping into her home in colourful dresses and loving smiles. Lucille smiles.Lucille's final moments, a character study.





	Black Moths and Butterflies

> _\- Beautiful things are fragile. At home, we have only black moths. Formidable creatures, to be sure, but they lack beauty. They thrive on the dark and the cold.  
>  \- What do they feed on?  
> \- Butterflies, I'm afraid._

 

„I won’t stop“, Lucille says. The blade cuts deep into her fingers, her blood drips on the tainted snow. „Until you kill me or I kill you.“ Edith is now as pale and trembling as she should be, a far cry from the butterfly stepping into her home in colourful dresses and loving smiles. Lucille smiles.

Until Edith tells her to turn around and Thomas, her Thomas, looks at her, blood flowing from his wounds, eyes sunken in. Lucille wants to sweep him into her arms and sing for him until the blood stops flowing and her eyes stop burning. He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t move. The ring on her finger feels heavy, suddenly.

Lucille can feel the blood oozing out of the wound on her chest, where the butterfly has stabbed her with the pen that should have signed its death certificate, can hear the butterfly’s ragged breathing behind her and thinks of five strands of hair braided in her drawer, thinks of all the butterflies she has killed and survived.

This one is different.

This one is different not just because it is the prettiest, the most colourful of them all. This one is different because it wasn’t chosen for money or how easily they can dispose of it. This one was chosen for its smile, its writing and its warmth.

Thomas loves this one.

And there is nothing Lucille can do to stop her love drifting away from her, towards yellow hair and defiant words. The butterfly runs from her on a broken ankle, shivers and cowers, but holds up the knife towards her, a glint in its eyes that none of the others had, weak and poisoned as they were.

There is life in this one, life Lucille thought had been drained out of her when she found out about the tea, about lullabies and hushed words and mother. Oh, mother, horrid woman that she was, watching, spitting at them. Lucille only wishes she could have spat back. She wishes she could have looked at their mother when she returned home, twenty and starved and bruised and so homesick she didn’t mind the sinking house, the gaping holes or the biting cold.

Lucille mouths her love’s name, and he looks at her, unblinking, blood oozing from the wounds she had to give him to keep him close, keep him here, bind him to her before the flood could take him away.

Maybe this one is no butterfly, she thinks as it hits her with the shovel and she pulls herself up, heaving. Maybe this one is the light they both flew into, blind to the danger until it burned them alive. After all, moths fly into the light, easily fooled by bright, flickering fire.

 

 

Edith Cushing leaves Allerdale Hall weak, but alive, the poison alight in her veins, her night gown drenched in blood and blood red clay, her husband’s blood on her hands, as Lucille plays her brother’s lullaby and longs for his embrace.


End file.
